Page 2 of Merry Little Midlife Matchmaker

“I think so. I don’t know. She hasn’t puked. At least, I don’t think so. Hazel, have you puked? No. No, she hasn’t.”

“Fine. I’ll see you soon.”

I hung up and stared at the silent phone in my hand and let out a long sigh. It wasn’t that I resented having to head over to my ex’s house to help with the kids. It’s that it happenedso often. Ever since Zach, our eleven-year-old, had been born, I’d been thrown into the role called Mom and hadn’t come up for air. Most of the time, I loved it. I was good at it. Actually, I wasgreatat it. I spun plates and made macaroni necklaces and dealt with tantrums and moodiness, and then I got the smiles and the unexpected hugs and theI-love-yousthat made it all worth it. Most of the time, I did it with a smile on my face and a positive attitude, because that’s the face I liked to present to the world.

Once in a while, though, I wondered where the old me had gone. The woman who threw dinner parties for her gaggle of friends, who was the group’s designated photographer, who’d dreamed of shooting for NatGeo, who’d fantasized about sailing around the world for a year with a camera around her neck and a smile on her sun-bronzed face. Sometime over the last decade and a half, with two kids and a divorce on my record, that woman had faded away.

These days I couldn’t even manage an uninterrupted bath.

But I was needed elsewhere, and this was a responsibility I had chosen. One I cherished. My kids needed me. The bath could wait.

I tossed my phone on the bed and grabbed a pair of sweatpants from where they’d been flung over the arm of a chair in the corner of my room. My ratty pink bathrobe took the sweatpants’ place, and I grabbed an old sports bra and a T-shirtfrom one of the volunteer days at my kids’ school—first one I picked up without any stains on it that passed the sniff test—and caught sight of myself in the mirrored closet doors.

With my hair still wrapped in the microfiber towel and my old clothes hanging off my body, I looked a decade older than my forty-one years. I blinked at myself, gaze snagging on the few spots of discoloration beginning to form on my skin, the ruddy texture of my cheeks the heat of the bath had brought out, and the shape of the body I’d once flaunted.

I was shorter than average, but I’d never been frumpy. The woman who’d thrown dinner parties and dreamed of a richer life had worn figure-hugging dresses that showed off her generous curves. She’d curled her hair and worn lipstick every day. She was a stranger, and I wasn’t quite sure exactly when it had happened.

Shaking my head, I tore my gaze away from my reflection and pulled on some fuzzy pink socks. The hair towel would have to stay, because I didn’t have time to wash out the oil. Besides, what was an extra half hour with oil on my scalp? Maybe I’d end up with luscious, shiny locks and this evening wouldn’t end up being a wash, after all.

See? Positive attitude. Puking kids plus a hopeless ex-husband equaled nicer hair. That was Lizzie Math, and it was the way I liked to live.

I shoved my feet into Crocs and slung my purse over my shoulder, then paused with a hand on my front doorknob. I kicked off the rubber shoes and checked the bathroom medicine cabinet, clicking my tongue when I saw my stock of Pedialyte and ibuprofen was running low. I’d stop at the drugstore on the way to Isaac's house for supplies. When I texted him to let him know, all my ex responded was, “Hurry.”

Half of me wanted to wring his neck for being so useless. The other half was worried for my kid. So, dressed like a womanwho’d stumbled into her dirty laundry basket and then stood up, looked down, shrugged, and said,Eh, that’ll do, I rushed across town and ducked into the nearest drugstore.

That, as it turned out, was a mistake.

TWO

LIZZIE

It’san immutable rule of the universe that when you look your worst, you run into the one person you least want to see.

In my case, I was head down, ass up, grabbing the generic brand ibuprofen while I juggled a few bottles of Pedialyte in my other hand—in my hurry, I’d decided that not using a basket to shop would be faster, somehow—when I heard his voice.

“Liz? Lizzie Butler?”

I stood up so fast the edges of my vision went mottled and black, and the bottles of electrolyte drink made a last-ditch bid for freedom. I bobbled them—hands flailing, vision fading—while my brain worked on recognizing the vision of a man standing next to me.

My right hand forgot it was holding two boxes of ibuprofen, and it tried to catch a falling bottle of Pedialyte. The result was a crushed packet of pills that knocked the bottle clean out of my own grasp. The two other bottles I’d been holding to my chest took their chance to jump ship.

“Whoa!” Sean Hardy said with a laugh, reaching for one of the bottles. He caught it in mid-air, because of course he did, but he wasn’t able to grab the other two.

I did my best to execute the same maneuver, but my balance was all wonky and I was a little stunned at howgoodmy brother’s best friend looked after all these years. The result was me reaching toward the bottles about two seconds too late, when they’d already hit the ground, and accidentally smacking Sean's beefy shoulder instead, a moment before I head-butted him in the chest.

His chest was solid. I think I hurt my forehead more than I hurt him.

His arms came around me while bottles rolled away from us, the towel turban on my head slipping to my neck to show off the mess of grease that was my soon-to-be gloriously shiny hair.

“Easy,” he said, like he was talking to a skittish horse, and gently steadied me while he watched me with those green-blue eyes I’d mooned over as a kid. His thumbs swept over my biceps, under the gaping sleeves of my baggy tee, hot and strong and rough, and I felt some tension pull below my belly button.

That’s literally all it took. His hands on my arms, holding me upright, combined with a slight brush of his thumbs over the distance of about an inch made my body say,Hello!

It would be embarrassing, if… Well, actually, the entire situation was embarrassing. In response to my growing mortification, I smiled at him and hoped I didn’t look as deranged as I felt. “Sean!”

He was as tall as I remembered, just over six feet, and it looked like he’d kept up with his fitness habit. His shoulders stretched the fabric of the deep green knitted sweater he wore, his long legs clad in soft-looking jeans. His jaw was rough with stubble that shone with a few strands of gray, and those remarkable eyes were framed with a small network of crinkles that somehow brought out their color.

He was gorgeous. He’d been all floppy-haired and edgy when he’d been running around with my two older brothers, but nowhe was something entirely different. Not quite clean cut, but not too rough around the edges, either. Just the right amount of sharpness to be positively delicious.

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